A place to hang your hat

and coats for the curved wall

Problems:

• Well, the hat felt looks too fuzzy and the shapes aren’t quite right.
• The small jacket is no use there at all as can’t see what on earth it is, but the coat may be OK.
• Needs a bag or satchel as well as the dog lead to dangle down perhaps?

Possible solutions:

• Might edge the brown hat and give it a ribbon too, but the school cap must go I think.
• Probably try out the bag idea and another coat or two; so not so much a place to hang your hat after all.

Curved wall – silly idea

Where the movable bit meets the less mobile bit

Original design was for a curved wall in the porch which is part of the removable slice of the house, but the other side of course, puts a curved bit in the hallway too.  Looks good, gives a bit of extra Deco feel to the area, however I tried it out in white to match the door wall but didn’t much care for it and felt it ought to match the rest of the walls at the bottom of the stairs.  That meant giving the wall a skirting board – no point trying to use the same wood as rest of the hallway on the curve.  So have used cardboard for the skirt and for the top trim to the half boarding area too.

3 mm card with a piece of cord applied at roughly the same level as raised ridge of wooden skirting

Result of having a go with paint on card and cord

Balsa panelling bends nicely and so does card skirting and top trim

Papered and with curved coat hooks ready for coats and hats

Card skirt meets wood skirt, more or less …

View of how curved wall docks, with a side glimpse of essential barometer at the foot of the stairs so you can tap it as you go past in the morning

More clutter in the family corner around the telephone

School satchel with bent notebook and ruler sticking out and slippers under the chair

Scarf on chair back, single roller skate (no straps!) and the slippers

Next?  Probably make a new window for the half landing at the top of the stairs.  Was going to have a faux stained glass thing but decided to go for metal framed with astragals so that needs sorting out pronto.

ps: now using the mains 12 v electrical supply so all lights are much brighter as have been using square battery in all previous photos – think I liked it dimmer 😉

 

One phone corner light, one extra shelf

Ah, now you can see to dial!

Managed only one session in the Potting Shed so far this week but it’s been a useful one.

The phone corner is a very small area and the as advertised 1:12 items do seem to make it smaller still.  To get round this I’ve so far put in a homemade table and the chair is a little china item which is slightly under-sized too.  For scale, I believe the vintage phone is 1:16 (ish) – but perhaps I’ve got that wrong as it looks a little bigger to me.

Wall light or not to wall light

Been having the same scale thoughts with wall lighting too as all that’s been tried out so far do overshadow and sort of bully the whole area;  then I came across this one for sale and thought I’d give it a go.  It’s incredibly heavy for what it is and I don’t know how I’d keep it on the wall if I’d put it up there, but that’s not entirely why it ended up as a table lamp.

 

As it happens we have an old lamp for the telephone corner (full size) – here with horrid modern saver bulb.

And here is the wall light used as a table light on a new corner shelf hastily thrown up last night, and this lamp has a nice round bulb under its large chrome dome

 

View when coming down the stairs. You can just about make out the new pelmet and somewhat scrunched curtaining from this angle

More or less fully equipped phone corner – hurrah!

Ooops

Forgot to mention that, after much discussion, I’ve stained the wallpaper to make it ‘feel’ that little bit warmer in colour …

As I hope is noticeable here (along with a thumb print on the camera lense!) the original slightly blue toned paper on the right and the stained on the left – showing how the colouring has collected in the bad join in the wallpaper too 😉

Somethings new to me

but old

No sooner had I completed the make-over sideboard for the dining room than this vintage one popped up for sale. I don’t yet know which I’ll use for here.

and I got the steam iron out

Flattened the bulky ‘hollyhock’ type flowers.

Another vintage item and a trip down memory lane

About 30 years ago I bought some iron-on transfers for embroidery.  When we were children on rainy days or when new items were needed, we were sometimes given cushion covers or tray cloths etc to embroider and they’d have the transfer either already put on for us or one of us would do the deed.

I’ve had this modern purchase of vintage transfers stored away and yesterday I vandalised one of the border strips for a small tablecloth to go on a drop leaf table not yet bought/made.

You notice there’s a 10p price mark per sheet on the vintage strip – goodness know how much they were originally

One vandalised strip. I seem to recall that you could get at least two uses out of an iron-on transfer but from these I could just squeeze out one

Bit lopsided but hopefully will be OK in place. The fabric is another vintage item it’s a very old arm sling from an ancient first aid kit

The sort of place it will sit probably and may have a vase or plant on it too

Meanwhile I’ve folded it in linen folding style and the dog is kindly holding it in position till it’s needed